With the advent of digital cameras, people can better capture memories and communicate points of view. Current technology enables pictures to be easily and conveniently previewed, taken, and reviewed. Digital photography has made cameras compact, portable, and low-powered. However, certain trade-offs are often associated with the portability that miniaturization brings, somewhat undermining the benefits of a readily accessible form of image-capture.
Specifically, zoom lenses appear at first to be versatile and provide more interesting images than prime lenses. A prime lens has a fixed focal length, so a user must adjust his or her relative position to get a desired image. This can impede the capture of an image if there is not enough physical space to properly frame the desired image. In contrast, a user is able to transition from a wide-angle view to a telephoto view with a single zoom lens without the need to physically move and thus capture alternative views. However, at the expense of such flexibility, the image quality from a zoom lens is considerably poorer than that from a prime lens. Part of this loss of image quality can sometimes be attributed to constraints on the range of aperture sizes available in a zoom lens. Generally a narrower aperture is unsuitable for low light situations and the resulting photo may appear blurry. Poorer image quality is also due in part to more glass for light to travel through. Additional glass has the effect of altering the light, leading to some degradation of the light. In contrast, a prime lens preserves the integrity of an image by virtue of its simple design. A prime lens has one focal length and fewer moving parts than a zoom lens that yield an image of maximum sharpness.
Additionally, for a camera module to provide zoom lens capability, the internal construction of the lens is rather complicated. For example, zoom lenses generally have over hundreds of individual parts. Therefore, one poorly machined part may squander the financial investment in the zoom lens, whether at the manufacturing stage or the commercial stage. Also, zoom lenses tend to be bulky and heavy, making them infeasible where portability is paramount.
Prime, or fixed focal length, camera lenses typically provide higher quality images than zoom or variable focal length lenses. Prime lenses also tend to be more compact and light weight than zoom lenses. In many modern imaging devices, particularly mobile phones, compactness is of utmost importance, making zoom lenses somewhat impractical. Therefore, some flexibility regarding varying focal lengths is typically sacrificed in mobile devices. However, the current invention is aimed at providing the high quality of images resulting from the use of prime lenses along with the convenience of having multiple focal lengths of a zoom lens.
Therefore, there is a need in the arts for a camera feature that allows for the versatility of a zoom lens with the image reproducing capabilities, light weight, and compactness of a prime lens. These and other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained and will become obvious to one skilled in the art through the summary of the invention that follows.